Similarities
by IronForce
Summary: Quote and Curly Brace set out to explore an abandoned city close to the floating island, and stumble upon a certain adventure novel trilogy, with striking similarities to their own reality. Warning: spoilers for Matthew Reilly's original Scarecrow trilogy and the best ending path of Cave Story.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: I wanted to write a Cave Story fic for a long time .. but didn't quite have an idea. Until I got one that was quite crazy, to cross it with Matthew Reilly. After all they both have soldiers, hunts for powerful artifacts, and heroes with fluff potential. Spoilers for the entire initial Scarecrow trilogy, and the best ending path of Cave Story. Enjoy!**

**\- IronForce**

An endless, almost dizzying grey-brown maze of rubble and destruction opened up before their eyes, spanning in both the horizontal and vertical directions almost as far as one could stretch their head to. Quote and Curly Brace had longed for some break from the routine after settling down with Balrog to their own rather idyllic new home, and this certainly qualified.

It was a human megalopolis that had been closest to the floating island when the war for the Demon Crown had started, and it had suffered badly. Practically, all sentient life had either been evacuated or exterminated, and just the skeletal, charred tower buildings, the collapsed freeway bridges and intersections, and endless tons of debris remained.

At places, nature was already reclaiming it; grass was starting to come out through the concrete.

Balrog had flown them to the city outskirts, but had not wanted to come further, claiming bad vibes. So it was up to the two battle robots to explore to their heart's content, and then return.

"It sure is spooky here," Curly said.

"Surprising that the humans haven't returned," Quote replied.

He had sometimes thought about the extent of the war – how far would they have to travel to find a functioning human society? Did one even exist any more?

Not that Quote cared that much. After the battle against the evil Doctor and Ballos, they had found their own place, and apart from the few good humans they knew, like Sue and her family, and Dr. Booster, there was not much good to expect. After so much time on his own, Quote certainly did not want to serve under anyone's command any more. Or to be memory-wiped so that he would accept new orders without questioning. That thought made him shudder.

They entered one of the towers, which appeared to have been a residential building, and then further into one of the apartments.

It was clear that a battle had been fought even inside. Tables and cupboards had been overturned for cover, but since the enemy had been a horde of frenzied Mimigas that would just rush madly forward, without the tiniest regard for their own self-preservation, it had not been of much use. It appeared that civilians had been evacuated, but the skeletal remains of a team of human soldiers lay on the floor. The first contact had been with humans, as the robot soldiers had not been immediately in use.

"It's just so very senseless," Curly mused. "And it was just by chance that we broke from our programming, and didn't go on with the slaughter."

A moment of silence followed. Quote thought of what to reply with, but all he could think of was muted agreement.

Suddenly Curly's expression lit up. She pointed to a doorway deeper in the apartment, and it was as if she instantly forgot her more somber thoughts. By now Quote had gotten used to these mood shifts, in fact they were quite endearing.

"Hey, there's a bookshelf there! And it looks like the books have survived. We should check it out..."

Quote appreciated how knowledge stored in books could be vital, even after the people who wrote them would be long gone. After all, without the manual on robot maintenance he had read in the waterway cabin, Curly wouldn't have been standing next to him now.

So they went inside the room, next to the bookshelf.

Robots like them could acquire knowledge very fast by scanning the pages with optical character recognition and flipping through with their precise mechanical fingers.

Quote got to work on one of the upper rows, which contained a lot of books all by the same author. They were stories of adventure, but marine-themed, and sea was an alien element to Quote, so he quickly lost interest and abandoned them.

Meanwhile Curly was sitting on the floor, examining a lower row, which had only three books. Those were by a different author.

"It's about a team of soldiers … they go to a very cold place. Hey! There's one who looks kind of like me. And one who is quite like you. And … there's a lot of fighting and death. And traitors. And a kind of disappointment. There was no alien craft after all."

Curly was through the first book very fast, and started through the second.

"The soldier-guy is kind of shy. Like you. And they have an awesome large friend. Like we have Balrog. She just refuses to die, though she is now ... partially a robot? If she has a metal leg? And there's more fighting and dying. The guy and gal kiss finally. And it kind of … ends like the first one, but a bit happier."

Onto the third.

"Now there's a bounty hunt. Soldier-guy and gal are separated, on their own missions. And there's a kind of evil guy who turns out to not be that evil. They go into this castle …"

Curly threw the book down suddenly. She was visibly upset.

"...and I don't want to read any more."

"It's just a story. Make-believe. I don't understand why you'd react so strongly," Quote blurted out.

Without answering, Curly got up and exited the room. And Quote was left there, feeling vaguely bad. Possibly he had upset her further.

Alone now, he decided to read the books for himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Sifting through the pages at record speed, Quote began to understand. The two soldiers had quite tragic pasts. The guy (with spiky black hair, much like Quote) had been captured and tortured, and would wear sunglasses just to hide the scars across his eyes. The soldier gal Quote found hard to imagine as anyone else but Curly, even if Curly had longer hair. She had started as a soldier out of anger, after being betrayed out of her former life. They both were kind of quiet and reserved, keeping to the matters at hand. Their comrades dying one by one reminded Quote of something he could recall from Curly's stories, that they had once been part of a larger team, fighting the Mimiga threat as per orders.

Quote skipped through most of the second book, until he reached the third, where stuff got properly serious.

Now he understood Curly's reaction. The soldier-guy and gal would get separated again, after which the latter would be cruelly decapitated. Meanwhile the guy was enduring a sadistic test of reactions, under the pain of death.

Initially Quote had little sympathy. You stupid, he thought. You saved her and then went immediately back to battle with no regard for her safety?

Then Quote remembered practically having done the same himself. He read a little bit forward, to the point where the guy was going to kill himself, and only the awesome large friend prevented him from doing that by fighting him.

And now the book basically got Quote thinking, what if he had not managed to save Curly back in the island's Core? How empty would his life be? Would he even have managed to retain the will to live?

If he was honest, Quote did not want to go too far with these meditations.

Rather, he put the books back on the shelf and got up. He needed to tell Curly how much he appreciated her being there every day.

He found her outside the building.

"I'm sorry … for dismissing you," Quote said. "I understand your reaction now."

Curly was still looking a bit down. "It's OK. It's not so much of what happened in the books, but what it got me thinking about. Back there in the Core, when I gave my air-bubble to you, I didn't realize how horrible you might feel afterward, left alone. I just acted by instinct."

"But you saved my life, that's what matters, not how I might have felt," Quote said. "And it all turned out OK."

He gave her a long hug. He thought he would have wanted to say something more … but it was in his nature to be somewhat reserved. Just like the Scarecrow guy in the books.

At least now Curly looked more like her upbeat self again. Also somewhat puzzled, like she still had something on her mind.

"Did you notice how it repeated … the guy carrying her, at least once in each book. That's quite like us too," she said.

"I did. But he was doing it wrong. He couldn't have fired a gun at the same time."

Curly laughed. "Well, they didn't have tow ropes. But they had these magnetic grappling hook things."

"Yeah. The Maghook. It could be useful. I mean, the booster rocket never gets you very far. Maybe if we found some parts from all this rubble, Dr. Booster could make one for you and me both."

"Sounds like a good idea."

So they ventured further into the megalopolis. But Quote soon found how hopeless it could be to scavenge the right kind of parts. They came upon a broken elevator, but the cable was too thick to spool on a handheld grapple gun.

Further on, there was a huge mound of trash. There were discarded inanimate objects of every kind, including complete motor vehicles. It was so high that Quote thought he would need the booster to climb to the very top, and only he had one, while Curly did not.

"I'll check this one still. But if I come up empty, we can head back," Quote suggested.

"Fine."

So Quote was on his way, applying judicious boosts from the rocket to propel him upward along the trash mound. There was a lot of rusted metal, and a lot of broken plastic, all the way to the top. But still not much of anything that would look useful.

Quote reached the very top. There was an indentation a couple of metres wide. Out of curiosity, he went closer.

To his sudden horror, the layer of trash gave way underneath him, as Quote found too late the indentation hid a long vertical shaft, to which he was now falling.

"Aaahhh!" he screamed as he fell.

It quickly became very dark. Quote understood to brake his falling with the booster rocket, and that saved him from serious damage, but the shaft seemed to go on for an eternity. He did not think the boosts would last long enough for him to ever reach the top again.

Finally he reached the bottom, stumbling somewhat ungracefully, but unhurt.

It was very dark in here.

He activated his amplified eyesight, and found he was in a man-made, subterranean concrete structure. A bunker, perhaps. There were signs on the walls which were familiar on a subconscious level. Military, very likely.

Aided by the light amplification, Quote went on to explore. There was this nagging thought, of whether he would ever find his way out back to Curly, but he forced it to the background. He just had to.


	3. Chapter 3

Power was out in the whole structure, but Quote almost screamed again when he bumped to a figure just a little shorter than him. A more primitive combat robot, remaining in an inert low-power state. It did not move, but its right eye socket pulsed faint red.

Now he knew the place was definitely military. There were a few more of the robots, but Quote just left them alone.

He reached a deserted office room. There were computers, but without electricity he would not get them to boot. They could have contained a map of this whole place, to help him find a route out, but no luck. He still had the Map System with him, which had helped him figure out the insides of the floating island way back then, but it remained inactive here. He had to map this place just in his head.

But he found something else on a nearby desk.

Hard copies of messages. Apparently, those between high-ranked military figures.

In the darkness, Quote's optical recognition worked a little slower, but it did not take him too long to decipher one of the messages.

_To: General Caldwell_

_Subject: Re: Demon Crown_

_The artifact we are discussing is of utmost importance. Its power characteristics are something we have never encountered before, and as such, it must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. This is now a race, which we must win no matter the cost._

After reading the Scarecrow books, Quote found this eerily familiar. The first had been a race to acquire the advanced aircraft buried in ice, without regard to the cost, even if it included killing your own.

But as Quote read the end of the message, he thought it was not just a similarity, but that he was actually going crazy. As if the books were suddenly invading reality.

_This has now become a matter of Intelligence Convergence, which supersedes your authority. As the first step, you should accelerate the development of the android soldier program. Otherwise, it is guaranteed there will be even greater casualties._

The ICG, or Intelligence Convergence Group, were the ultimate bad guys in those books. Did they also exist for real? Had they been hunting the power of the Demon Crown, superseding normal military authority? Quote found his head spinning, and told himself to focus. It did not matter what the truth of the Demon Crown war was. It was in the past already. Only getting out of here mattered.

Quote exited the office, back into the maze of subterranean corridors.

The bunker was not that large, and it did not take Quote long to reach the entrance doors, made of thick steel. But his hope was short-lived, as he understood they would require power to operate. Which was most definitely out.

The long vertical shaft was still the most promising way out. But the booster rocket was not going to cut it.

With mounting desperation, Quote left the entrance to go through the whole complex one more time. Maybe there was something he had missed...?

Sure enough, there was a locked armory room he had dismissed earlier.

_Advanced Weapons and Equipment, _the sign on the door read.

It was also locked. But Quote thought one lock was not going to hold him for long. He took the Polar Star, which he had kept charged to the maximum level, and fired at the lock repeatedly, until the steel just melted away, giving off red hot light in the darkness.

Quote waited just a few seconds for it to cool down, then pushed the door open and entered the armory.

He sifted through the lockers and cabinets, finding various very advanced-looking automatic and sniper rifles, grenades, mines and even portable turrets, but none of them were going to help him reach the top.

There was one more cabinet a the very back, with a padlock. Quote fired the Polar Star again, the padlock was no longer there, and the cabinet flew open.

Inside were several short rifle-like objects, with bulbous heads and spooling mechanisms. And this was like another step into insanity, as Quote quite knew what they were, but he was not going to protest, really.

They had to be Maghooks.

Quote scooped up two of them. One for him and one for Curly. Then he got up into a run, to reach the vertical shaft fast. He thought Curly was probably already going mad with worry, and it was high time he left this forsaken place.

At the shaft now.

When Quote looked up, he saw light very far above. And yet, escape was uncertain. Would the length of the cable on the Maghook be enough? Aiming upward, he fired the device. The cable spooled out to the maximum, and then...

The magnetic head just fell back down, having failed to reach the top. And Quote's spirits fell down similarly. That alone was not yet the solution. What else there was?

Out of ideas, he shouted above, unsure of whether his voice would even carry far enough.

"Curly! Are you there?"

Quote waited. After what seemed like a very long while, he thought he saw some very small motion at the very top.

"Quote!" came the shout back.

"I fell down here! And you won't believe, but I found … Maghooks! The cable is just not long enough. I'm kind of out of ideas!"

"Let me think!" Curly shouted back. The voice echoed down the shaft, a little hard to decipher, and Quote wondered if she had even understood properly.

A few seconds passed.

"They did this thing in the second book … using two Maghooks! I try to remember … they reversed the polarity on the other. I'll reverse mine!"

Quote was honestly puzzled. "Not so fast … how am I going to get the other Maghook to you?"

As soon as his words were out, he knew the possible solution. The booster rocket. Without his weight, it might have just enough juice to carry the second Maghook up the shaft.

But … he would have only one shot, right? And the booster would be out of control without him to steer it.

Or actually, as the booster recharged by itself, they would have practically unlimited tries. But still it could take a lot. It might even be impossible, if the booster would just keep colliding to the shaft wall.


	4. Chapter 4

Quote lost track of time. He was too tired to even call out to Curly each time he tried sending out the rocket, and almost too tired to keep dodging it when it would inevitably fall back.

He just needed to get lucky, get the starting angle just right. Practically it could be completely random, just a minute adjustment would become a huge deviation at the top.

Quote gathered his resolve for a moment.

"Screw it. I'll try one more time, and then we'll have to think of something else. Like powering up this place!" he shouted.

He aimed the rocket upward once more, the Maghook strapped to it by its cable. Almost like aiming a gun, he tried to keep it pointed dead straight toward the top of the shaft, and not disturb the aim even a tiny bit while he hit the ignition switch.

The booster fired, quickly disappearing out of sight. And Quote prepared himself for another disappointment.

He waited.

The rocket and the Maghook should have clattered back down by now.

Then he was startled by Curly's voice.

"I got it! There's this plus-minus switch here. I'll switch it to minus. Make sure yours is plus! I'll fire it down first, then you fire yours up. When the heads are connected, I'll reel you up!"

It sounded easy in theory. Still Quote was pretty sure something could yet go wrong.

* * *

Even though it was already beginning to set, the assault of the sun on Quote's amplified sight was dazzling, and he quickly switched the amplification off. He couldn't quite believe he was out again! The plan had worked just like Curly had imagined. Once safely over the edge of the shaft, Quote found her holding him very tight.

"After this I won't let you out of my sight," Curly said, practically bursting with happiness.

"You saved me again," Quote replied. "Thanks."

Quote had not skipped the second book completely, so he knew how to do a kiss in Scarecrow style. He clasped his hands gently around Curly's head and closed in to kiss her on the lips. Afterward, Quote could tell she liked it. Quite a lot.

But finally, it was time to head down the mound. With these treasures at hand, it was high time to exit the city. It was very improbable they would find anything more valuable.

"It's kind of a crazy coincidence, those books becoming reality in here," Curly mused as they made their way down.

Quote wondered whether he should tell of the sinister ICG message … or not.

He settled on telling. After all, Curly was his partner in adventure and warfare, and she could handle it. She deserved to know.

"They're bad news," Curly said after Quote had finished. "And I wouldn't want to be around if they ever return here."

"Me neither."

Quote thought they should even scan the Maghooks for anything out of the ordinary, like tracking devices. Would not want those assholes ever finding their new home.

They walked on in silence for a moment.

"I think … I have it so much better than that Fox gal in those books," Curly said out of a sudden.

That was sort of a no-brainer. Better alive than dead. Even if she was only fictional despite the Maghooks being real.

"The books always made a point of describing her as compact. But I'm just as tall and strong as you," Curly remarked. "And I think you're also cuter than Scarecrow."

Quote thought this was almost getting out of hand. The next step was probably her insisting to carry him down.

But it was so easy to agree that he also had it so much better than Scarecrow.

* * *

Instead of marching throughout the night, they had made camp. They would reach the city outskirts and call for Balrog in the morning anyway.

"There was one more Scarecrow thing … when I was rebooting, you watched over me, right? It's at the end of the first book," Curly said in between yawns.

Quote certainly remembered that. It had required faith that she would be all right, eventually.

"Do you want me to do that again?" he asked.

"No, it's better you recharge properly."

Curly began the sleep cycle soon after, but Quote did not, at least immediately. He thought of the day once more. It was almost like different realities colliding. The very rational part of his brain just thought that it would be inevitable that nations would develop a sinister and evil Intelligence mechanism above their official military, and that they would invent magnetic grappling hooks, if they invented fully sentient battle robots too.

This train of thought finished, then he just looked at the sleeping Curly, and thought of how very glad he was to have her at his side.

* * *

Morning.

Quote and Curly were on the move, rounding a final corner in the suburbs of the megalopolis to find Balrog standing by.

"Is she hurt?" Balrog asked quite predictably.

"Not for real," Quote shouted back. "We're play-acting a scene from a book. I'm transporting Curly, who is transporting ... what was it?"

"A fake heart signal transmitter box that keeps some bombs from exploding!" Curly filled in.

"But actually those things in her lap are magnetic grappling hooks that we found. It's a kind of a long and weird story. We can explain during the flight back."

If he was honest, Quote thought this was the worst kind of battle tactic, to have all of their hands tied up and unable to fire. He had to admit it looked cute though, and supposedly it was OK if they were absolutely sure the route was clear of enemies.

"Sure," Balrog muttered, the single word full of non-comprehension as the two climbed atop. And Quote thought the confusion would not get better at all once they retold the story of the realities mixing in full.


End file.
